Carideo,
O’Conner, Mullins and Savoldi in their track uniforms.
(From the University of Notre Dame Archives)

This article is called
“Remembering Jumpin’ Joe Savoldi” and is by Rick Young for The
South Bend Tribune.

“Hey, was your dad Jumpin’ Joe
Savoldi?"

Joe Savoldi III has heard that
question hundreds of time at athletic banquets and from customers at his
Dodge dealership, even down in
Birmingham,
Ala., in the heart of Bear Bryant
country.

His dad was indeed one of Notre
Dame's all-time great backs and a colorful character to boot. Jumpin'
Joe Savoldi was a sophomore on the 1928 "Win one for the Gipper" team, a
junior on the undefeated 1929 national champion team and a senior on the
1930 squad, Knute Rockne's last and probably best team, which repeated
as national champs.

Savoldi played in the Chicago Bears
backfield with Red Grange and Bronko Nagurski. He was celebrated
professional wrestler and was even a spy during World War II.

"His reputation has held up longer
than you can imagine," said his son, a Harbert,
Mich., native who started his own
auto dealership in
Birmingham in 1974. "My dad died in
1972. He would have been 74. There have been a lot of heroes at Notre
Dame since he played, but the old-timers remember him.

"I was born in 1934, so I never saw
him play football," continued his son. "But I saw him
wrestle an awful lot. Before the age of five, I had been around the
world with him. "He never got out of
Italy with his purse because
Mussolini confiscated it when dad refused to give the Fascist salute."

Joe Savoldi Jr.
became Jumpin' Joe Savoldi against Carnegie Tech in 1929. "It was a goal
line situation and he took a jump of the line and scored." his son said.
"Everybody does it now, of course, but apparently nobody had thought of
it back then.”

Savoldi played in
only six games in 1930 before he was dismissed from Notre Dame for being
married, a violation of university rules. Still, he made second team
All-America.

"There was an awful
lot of publicity about his being thrown out of school," Joe III said.
"Of course, he always had the headlines anyway. The Bears gave him a few
thousand dollars as a bonus, big money then, to play with them, and
apparently his teammates resented it. He said when he hit the line, 20
guys would hit him."

Jumpin' Joe turned
to wrestling in 1931.

Joe in his prime as a world
champion wrestler – when that title meant something. (From the
J.G. Savoldi collection)

“Ed (Strangler)
Lewis, one of the originators of big-time pro wrestling, took Dad under
his wing and he wrestled for 16 years. Dad was 5-11, 220 pounds with an
18 ˝ inch neck and a chest that went along with it. A lot of his Italian
relatives were stone masons. He was born in
Italy and didn't get over
here until he was 12.

"The way pro
wrestling came about was that amateur wrestling was too dull for the
audience," continued Joe III. “Pro basketball has emphasized offense and
not defense over the years. Pro wrestling decided to do the same thing.

"In the early days,
that meant if a guy had you down in a hold that you couldn't get out of
but that wouldn't win the match, he let you out.

"But in those days
if something flew out of your mouth it was a real tooth. They bled real
blood. You might get thrown out of the ring 15 rows up in the stands.
I've seen a wrestler wipe out a line of typewriters along press row.'

Jumpin' Joe was a
spy after the breakout of the Second World War. "The government came to
dad because he could speak fluent Italian and knew all the dialects. He
was put in
Italy six months before the
invasion of
Italy. After the war, he was
a provost
marshall of
Naples."

He played all three
sports as a freshman, but concentrated on track afterwards. A high
hurdler and decathlete, he felt he had a chance to make the 1956 Olympic
team. But he tore up an ankle in the NCAA finals.

He admits frustration over Notre
Dame's four victories without a loss of
Alabama's football team. I’m for
Notre Dame," he explains, "when they aren't playing
MichiganState or
Alabama.”